FORT LEE — As bumper-to-bumper traffic moved slowly over the George Washington Bridge toward Manhattan on Tuesday afternoon, top Democratic lawmakers stood on a cliff in the shadow of the bridge stumping for their party's candidate for governor, Phil Murphy, and driving home a familiar theme: Gov. Chris Christie's second-in-command, Kim Guadagno, can't be trusted.

U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr., Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg, Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer and Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich each said, at a news conference that was lightly attended, that Bridgegate, the 2013 political scandal that shut down the upper level of the bridge and caused a traffic nightmare, smeared Guadagno's credibility.

"She didn't close the lanes. I'm not suggesting that she did," Sokolich said. "But, just as bad, she did nothing once she was placed on notice as to exactly what happened."

Murphy and Guadagno have recently begun focusing attention on issues that tend to quicken the pulse of their base voters, blocs that will be key to the outcome on Nov. 7, since it’s expected to be a low-turnout contest.

Guadagno, a Republican, has drawn attention to immigration and gun rights, while Democratic nominee Murphy has regularly raised the bridge lane-closure scandal as an example of the need for a change in leadership in Trenton.

The morning of the event in Fort Lee, Murphy released an advertisement featuring him near the bridge and trying to link Guadagno to the scandal that helped bring down Christie’s presidential ambitions. “A bridge shut down over politics. Their biggest triumph was a traffic jam,” Murphy says in the ad.

Guadagno's campaign responded Tuesday, saying in an email, "The ad is pathetic and completely ignores reality."

Neither Christie nor Guadagno was found to have had a hand in the lane-closure scheme that federal prosecutors said was carried out in retribution against the borough's Democratic mayor for not endorsing Christie’s re-election in 2013.

The ad and the news conference at the bridge emphasized a tactic that Murphy has recently begun using during the final month of the campaign. At least two high-profile surrogates, former Secretary of State John Kerry and former Vice President Al Gore, brought up the bridge scandal during appearances with Murphy.

As much as Guadagno has reiterated that it's her name on the ballot in November, not Christie's, Zimmer said the two are one and the same.

"I have firsthand experience with Lt. Gov. Guadagno, so it's not just the Christie administration that's willing to abuse its powers," Zimmer said. She said Guadagno threatened her around the time of the bridge-lane scandal to move forward with a development or "lose Sandy funding."

Guadagno, meanwhile, has continued to compare Murphy to former Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine while also turning to the right on the issues of immigration and gun control.

She aired a controversial ad last week insisting that Murphy would support rapists and killers by making New Jersey a sanctuary state for undocumented immigrants.

In a speech on Sunday to the Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs, Guadagno said Murphy wants to “harbor dangerous felons who should have been detained in our prisons because he believes in a sanctuary state.” Guadagno later chastised Murphy for using the shooting massacre in Las Vegas two weeks ago to renew his pledge to sign every piece of gun-related legislation that Christie has vetoed. She accused Murphy of wanting to take guns from people and reiterated that she doesn’t think New Jersey needs tougher gun laws — including corporal punishment, which is banned in New Jersey.

“Quite frankly, if you want to be honest about it, we should institute the death penalty for somebody who does something like that,” Guadagno said, referring to the Las Vegas shooting. But overall, she added, “We should not take away my right to defend myself in my own home.”